Page 193 - Climate Change and Food Systems

As shown in the IMPACT results, global increases in income and population and constraints on productivity growth will cause real crop prices to rise – and this is more notably the case with climate change than without. Between price increases spurring farmers to use more inputs to increase yield, and general technological improvements in crops, yields will rise. In many cases in Africa, the price effect will lead yields to rise even more under climate change than they would have done without. This seemingly counter- intuitive result is due to the negative climate change impacts on crop yields in much of the rest of the world, which will boost world crop prices enough to counterbalance the direct effects of climate change on crop yields in Africa.
5.1 Essential points for policy-makers
■ Good agricultural policy for today will also be helpful for the future
Climate change is incremental, so one way
of seeing things is to understand that climate change is already happening. What can improve agricultural productivity now? Not only will this help farmers adapt to climate change already being experienced, but it will put them on the road to future adaptation as well.
■ Researchers will need to work together with farmers to develop new crop varieties and livestock breeds – along with supporting agronomic and husbandry methods, extension services and mechanisms for scaling up and out
In many cases, this will require a shift in budget priorities, and the sooner the shift, the better. New varieties take quite a long time to develop and test. Varieties that can adapt to climate change ten years from now need to start being developed today.
■ Institutions and policies in agriculture need to be redesigned to be more flexible and robust across a range of possible future climates, and diverse outcomes across ecozones
There is sufficient disagreement between equally valid climate models that scientists are unable to specify how climate will impact a village or district or an ecozone. As a result, it is important not to overcommit resources to
a specific climate outcome that may not even materialize, but rather to calibrate investments in response to evolving changes over time and to create a menu of options for farmers as well as policy-makers.
■ In some, but not all, countries, severe productivity losses will be experienced in some parts of the country while productivity gains will be experienced in other parts, creating pressure for migration
While this needs further study, it also suggests that laws in the areas of property rights and protection of environmentally sensitive areas may need to be examined and improved.
In these cases, higher investments in rural infrastructure would also facilitate climate change adaptation.
chapter 5: climate change impact on key crops in africa: using crop models and general equilibrium models to bound the predictions
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